


I’m just the sucker who let you fill her mind.

by dodgingbullets



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 10:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12079482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dodgingbullets/pseuds/dodgingbullets
Summary: She gets a 4.0 and you get arrested.You were lucky to have once been caught in her gravity, but now you’re out of her orbit and you’re tail spinning out of reality and the further you fall from the sun, the darker it gets. You need a place where you’re more than just a small meteor trapped in the gravitational pull of something brighter and better than you. You could barrel into her and you’d just burn into nothing before you even touched her surface. That’s how small you feel.---post-high school realizations between best friends.





	I’m just the sucker who let you fill her mind.

You go to a different college than Riley, because who thought you’d go to the same one? 

Not you. 

Plus, she’s going to a college five times more expensive than your student loans can even begin to cover, because a girl like Riley gets scholarships and accolades and a girl like you gets left behind. You’re not mad at her. She offered to go to community with you but you refused, almost screamed at her, at the idea of Riley throwing away a full-ride to an Ivy League to stroke the ego of an insecure brat.

You’ve always been the one dragging her down.

You resolve to use the extended time apart from Riley to find yourself, find a Maya without Matthews. It doesn’t feel very possible, but it can’t possibly be healthy to have an identity tied so closely to a friend. Especially a friend who’s always been bigger and brighter without you dimming her down.

The two of you text constantly and Facetime every night until the early morning for the first few weeks apart, and in those weeks, you feel unstoppable. It dwindles down in the weeks following, but that hardly surprises you. Riley makes friends, because, well, she’s Riley, and you make friends too, kind of. They’re just a little… disappointing. You’re starting to think that maybe Riley’s ruined you for other friendships.

Sometimes you still think of the last late-night-to-early-morning-marathon Facetime call you had with her. 

She was laughing at something you said, some stupid passing comment about your professor. She always finds you funny, which is ridiculous because the only funny you feel is funny looking, most of the time. Then she stopped laughing and looked straight at you and you avoided eye contact through the lens of your phone’s front-facing camera.

“I miss you, peaches.” She said. “I love you.”

It broke your heart a bit. It still does, hearing her say that. It’s abundantly clear to you at this point in your life that there’s nothing that spins your world on its axis quite like Riley’s laughter does. You miss her and you love her but you’re sure you feel it so differently from how she does that it’s too embarrassing to tell anyone. You’d only bring her down, anyways.

So you smiled and blew her a kiss and asked her about her week. The following days, you told her you’re too tired to continue late night calls and she obliged, although the lack of emojis in her response was a telling sign that Riley was not ecstatic about it. 

Riley doesn’t ask why, though, only says she’s happy that you’re taking care of yourself and getting sleep. You can’t text her if she thinks you’re sleeping, so you end up just laying in bed most nights, staring at the ceiling. The spinning metal fan hanging precariously from the popcorn textured ceiling marks the first few weeks of talking-but-not-really-talking to Riley.

She starts internships and you start drinking.

It starts slow enough that you don’t notice that it’s an actual problem. Drinking is social, and you’re always social, so it’s easy to associate the drinking away. It’s college so nobody really spares a second look at the girl partying on Saturday nights. But then Saturday night drinks become weekend long benders, and weekend long benders bleed into daily vodka handles hidden in water bottles and flasks. 

You only call Riley when you’re sober, half because you don’t want to see the judgement in her eyes and half because you know she wouldn’t judge you but you’d deserve it, so you end up calling her less and less. Eventually, the communication diminishes to the occasional good morning text or holiday emoji spam.

It’s not her fault. You think being around her prevented your horrific fall from grace happening sooner but now that she’s far away, there’s no sunshine lighting up the dark corners of your mind. The parts of your mind that wonders who you are, what you’re good for. The moments where you get glimpses of a father who never loved you, a mother who gave you tight lipped smiles and ten-dollar bills for lunch and dinner.

It’s one of those times that you sit up, eyes blurred and ceiling spinning, surrounded in scantily-clad girls and hollering boys, the burnt cotton tip of a cigarette between your fingers and the faint smell of whiskey in your cough, staring at the sky through the balcony window and wondering if Riley is too. And she is, probably, staring at the sky through a library window or with a group of nice kids who are going somewhere in life or maybe while talking on the phone to the parents who’ve seen her grow from child to adult. It’s then that you really consider how different you are from your best friend.

Your phone lights up with Riley’s name, some nights, but you let it go to voicemail.

You make friends, because you’re pretty and you’re cool and sometimes that’s all it takes for people to invite you around to parties. They’re not real friends, since real friends probably have seen each other sober before, but to be fair, you’re never sober anymore to begin with. You even start dating one of them – Jason, because he’s always smiling and cheering you up, although with tequila and rum. It’s not healthy but it’s what you feel like you need so it’s not the worst. 

You think about girls sometimes. No, not many girls. One girl.

Is it wrong? You don’t wrestle the idea too much – it’s not like you to have gay panic. Thinking about Riley doesn’t feel weird in that way. It doesn’t feel unnatural. She’s dug a deep hole in your heart and burrowed in it for years and years so loving her doesn’t scare you in how it makes you feel. Of course you love her. Of course. And she loves you. But it’s different. She’s in the sky, millions of light years away, center of the solar system and you’re here, on earth, sandwiched on a beer-soaked futon between friends who know only your first name, seven shots and three beers in.

Jason grins at you and you kiss him, because he belongs on the same world as you, messy and dirty and going nowhere. He hands you a glass of whiskey and you knock it back with a smile, because Riley takes shots at the stars and you take shots of liquor. You both keep doing what you’re good at.

You were lucky to have once been caught in her gravity, but now you’re out of her orbit and you’re tail spinning out of reality and the further you fall from the sun, the darker it gets. You need a place where you’re more than just a small meteor trapped in the gravitational pull of something brighter and better than you. You could barrel into her and you’d just burn into nothing before you even touched her surface. That’s how small you feel. 

Jason grabs your hand and you hammer a few pieces of different jigsaw puzzles into one dysfunctional portrait. Soon, she stops calling altogether.

She gets a 4.0 and you get arrested.

It’s the worst night in a while, too. You break up with Jason because you realize you kind of hate the guy - he’s like, actually really awful - and then you go drinking with the girls. Janice has cocaine, because Janice _always_ has cocaine, that’s kind of her thing – and you end up getting so wasted that you get kicked out of three different bars. The girls stay at the last bar you’re kicked out of, because they don’t notice or they don’t care, you’re not entirely sure which.

You end up throwing a punch at a bouncer in a dumb, drunk attempt at getting back in, but you’re really nothing compared to the six foot five man with arms the size of your body. He doesn’t hit you, thank god, probably because you still look like a high schooler, except with more access to makeup and four extra years of insecurity tacked on.

The cops aren’t very nice to you, either, although you screaming “fuck the police” most likely didn’t leave the best impression on your arresting officers. It’s okay though. It’s fine. The handcuffs stop chaffing when you stop struggling so it’s fine.

Officer Harrison or Harrington or Harri-whatever-the-fuck lets you call someone but your phone is shattered on the floor of that dive-y shithole-y bar back in Brooklyn. It doesn’t end up mattering, because her number falls out your mouth like the vomit that follows a short second later. It’s the only number you’ve ever memorized to the point that you can recite it half-unconscious. 

“Hello? Who is this?” Her voice is tired, the sleepy drawl of a girl who sleeps during normal hours. 

“I’m – I need you –“

“Maya? Is this you? Where are you? Are you okay? What happened?” 

You can hear her getting up and pulling on clothes and you want to respond but you pass out somewhere between her frantic questions. You phase back into consciousness a good few hours later, when the cop unlocks the drunk tank and shakes you awake. Being shaken half-drunk-half-hungover and with your hands cuffed behind your back is not a fun way to wake up.

“Your friend is here.”

Immediately, Riley is by your side, worried eyes and arms holding her cardigan over her pajama covered body. She must have driven a long way to get here, you think. She has more important things to be doing than driving hours upon hours at six in the morning to bail your ass out of trouble. You follow her to her car and she rolls down the window so that you can rest your chin halfway out, away from her leather interior.

“Maya –“

“Please, let’s not.” You grumble, leaning your head against the window frame, and she purses her lips and stares at the road.

She stays quiet, which your hangover is thankful for but you feel increasingly worse. All you want is for her to take you home and leave without a sound but you’re desperate, so desperate for her to grab you by the arms and shake you and yell at you. Tell you that you’re a failure, a waste of time and space. Look at you with disappointed eyes. How you ignored her for months and the first time you’re reaching out is so that she could get your ass out of trouble, like always. How she’s always been there for you and you’ve always been… there. And barely, at that.

She doesn’t, though. She walks you inside your shitty, empty place and looks at you all warm and soft like you mean something.

“Maya, you don’t have to talk about what’s wrong, but I want you to know that I’m not mad at you. I’m glad you called me. I missed you. I’m glad you’re okay and I’m not mad about the drive.”

And she means it, you know she does. She’s not being sarcastic or passive-aggressive because that’s Riley – understanding and grateful and so much better than you’ll ever be. It pisses you off that she can remotely accept the things you’re doing, the person you’ve become. She makes it so easy for you to fall into the same repeated patterns but so hard for you to want to stay making the same mistakes.

“You need to stop this. You need to stop looking at me through rose-colored glasses.”

“Maya…”

“Fucking look at me, Riley! Like, really look at me. I’m pathetic.”

You’re shaking and your stomach is turning but you can’t stop the words pouring out your mouth. You much prefer real vomit over word.

“You’re not pathetic.”

“You had to drive five hours to bail me out of jail for public intoxication and disorderly conduct.”

“We all have bad nights.“

She stops and stares you right in the eyes and you shrink to the size of a grain of rice under that gaze.

“This was just tonight, right?”

The dead silence following her question is an answer in itself.

“Why haven’t we been in contact? You stopped answering my calls and replying to my texts so I just… I figured you were busy.” She asks, shifting gears.

“I never want to talk to you drunk. I don’t want you to see me like that.”

“We haven’t talked in months.”

Riley’s eyebrows furrow and you can see the puzzle pieces fall into place in her head. It’s so embarrassing that you want to pick up the floorboards and crawl under them. A flash of concern lights up Riley’s eyes and, to your horror, it only grows.

“Maya…”

“Riley, don’t.“

“I can help you through this… I take a semester off and –“

“No! Riley! Just because I’m falling apart without you doesn’t mean it’s your place to fix me!”

You shout at her in a way you’ve never shouted at her before and she recoils at the burst of energy.

“I’m not trying to fix you. I want to be there for you.”

“Why? I’m a goddamn mess, Riles.”

“I love you.” She says, holding your hand. “I’ll always love you, no matter how you are.”

You nod, because you know she does, you’ve been best friends for what feels like centuries, but she keeps trying to look in your eyes and suddenly you feel overwhelmed. This feels like something different. You give in and meet her eyes and she’s looking at you like you look at her. You don’t second guess it, because of course she loves you, of course. 

She leans forward and kisses you, gentle and kind, the kind of kiss that tastes of loyalty and trust and respect. You kiss back, with kisses that scream desperation and anger and pain. You stumble backwards immediately, arms grabbing her closer until you’re pressed up against your kitchen counter and you wonder if one of you or both of you are crying. Her lips work against yours in perfect synchronization, despite how messy everything feels. She belongs here, in your arms, her lips on yours, her body so familiar and so foreign on your skin. It feels so good, it feels so good and so right, and –

It’s not right.

You push her away. You didn’t know you even had the willpower to push Riley away, but you do. You feel burned by the contact. She looks up at you in confusion, face red and breathing heavy from the kiss. It takes all of your resistance not to grab her and push her against the wall and show her everything you’ve ever felt for her. You’re still on earth and she’s still the sun and you’ll burn into ash if you hold her any closer.

“Do you – do you not want this?” She asks, her voice shaking.

“No, Riles, I’m not – I’m not saying that I’m looking for an excuse to not be with you. I want to. I want to be with you so bad. But not right now, not while I’m like this.”

Because you know – the moment she says it, you know she’ll love you in any and every way. She’ll love you blind and she’ll love you deaf. She’ll love you when you’re driving her off the steepest cliff and she’ll love you when you’re pouring the water over her sunspots. You can’t do that to her – you won’t do that to her.

“I’m only going to hurt you and hurt myself if I’m with you like this. I love you, God, Riley, I love you. I’ve loved you for so long. I love you too much to do this to you.”

Riley looks at you with eyes wet with unshed tears. Her hands are shaking now too and she’s biting her lip in uncertainty.

“I’m going to be better. I’m going to get better.”

You mean it this time, too.

You hold her, or she holds you. You don’t remember too much, because you’re busy whispering promises into her hair, that this isn’t the end, there’s never an end – not when it comes to you and Riley.

For the next few months, every time you walk into the kitchen, you can still feel the heat radiating off the counter. Sometimes you stand there on days when your body is begging you to for just one sip of vodka, with your back against the counter, and you can almost smell her and feel her. You remember how perfect she felt in your arms and how you pushed her back; you remember how you’ve fought what your body craved once before. It makes you fight.

Riley gets a diploma and you get sober.

It doesn’t feel like a lot, in comparison. There’s a bit of distance still since the night in your apartment, because she’s respecting your self-recovery and you’re respecting her feelings. But you’re there in the audience when she goes on stage to shake the Dean’s hand and get her signed, shiny papers, and she’s there quietly beaming up at you when you go to the front of the room and announce your one year clean. You pick up art again, while you’re recovering, because it’s something that makes you feel human and something that makes you feel more like yourself than anything else.

You work hard on a portfolio that outlines your struggles with alcohol and escapism, with a touch of the things that made you want to fight through it. The day your application goes through, five days after your one year sober, is the day you breathe out a deep breath that you did not realize you were holding in since you and Riley parted ways in high school, all those years ago.

For once, you can see light creeping in to those dark corners of your mind. There is more than darkness now, and the moon that lights your path is yours and yours alone. It feels good, because you finally find a Maya underneath a childhood of hiding behind Riley’s light and a young adulthood stumbling around in the dark. And as beautiful and personal as the moon is, you still find the road you’re walking on dim and lonely. Once you’ve known the sun, it’s hard to forget a world without her.

Six days after your one year sober, you’re knocking on her door at midnight.

She goes outside with you to a nearby park and you both sit on a bench quietly until you find your voice.

“I found out that there’s a Maya-without-Riley underneath all this mess, and she’s turned out not as awful as I figured.” You say, and Riley gives you a smile that’s a mix of pride and sadness.

“She never was.” Riley says.

One of her hands finds yours and you lean back. She looks at you in a way that you don’t understand but you want to.

“What’s wrong?” You ask.

“I’m really happy you found yourself. I truly, truly am. I love seeing you so happy and sure of yourself. I just…”

She pauses.

“Is it selfish that I wish a Maya-without-Riley didn’t mean there’d be a Riley-without-Maya?”

Riley quickly wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater, looking down at the ground. Sometimes you put Riley so far in the center of the universe that you forget she’s always been here on earth with you, this whole time. She was never the one to let go. In her world, maybe she was the girl on earth and you were the moon that drifted higher and further away into the night sky until one day it was gone and she was alone in the dark. You grab her other hand and wait until she looks back up at you.

“I didn’t want to destroy what we could’ve had with my insecurities and I didn’t want to keep tying my identity to yours and keep feeling like I was failing when it didn’t match up. I want you to see me as the best version of me, not as the worst version of you. And I think I’m there now.” You say.

“What does that mean?” She asks. “For us?”

“If you’ll still have me –“

Her lips are on yours before you can finish your sentence.

It’s like kissing the sun, a little bit. Your lips are on fire and your hands don’t know where to touch without ending up in flames and you keep your eyes tightly closed but she bleeds through your eyelids like beams of light. Your hands find their way around her neck and her back and to your surprise, you don’t burn to ashes and she doesn’t go out like an extinguished flame. 

You lean back to absorb her in, brown locks draped halfway across her forehead and a happy smile stretched across her face. Her cheeks are pink and her lips glisten; her eyes are dark and wanting.

“Thank you for waiting. For being patient with me.” You say, resting your forehead against hers. “Thank you.”

Your lips feel cold without hers on them.

“Peaches, at the risk of sounding impatient,” She breathes, “I need you to talk less and kiss more.”

You end up back at your apartment that night with Riley, passing by the kitchen sink where you poured the last of your vodka one year ago, against the counter where you got your first heat stroke. Your back meets more surfaces of your house in one night than in the years you’ve lived here, and when you finally fall into bed with Riley, your bed has never felt more comfortable.

She lays in your arms and now you’re holding the sun and you realize it takes someone brave and tempered to do that – hold the sun. And it’s you, you’re doing it, and she wants you to do it. This is you, Maya-just-Maya, living and breathing and not needing – but choosing – to be with Riley, and it’s right. It’s finally right.

You’re still years behind your peers and you’re applying for some stupid job to help pay rent. You’ll probably take part-time classes at the art school while Riley looks for jobs around the city, and you’ll probably always look twice when someone orders alcohol around you. It doesn’t matter right now, because you finally feel like this is right and you deserve this and she deserves you. When she tells you you’re beautiful, you believe it.

She says she loves you more so much more than you can imagine, which is ridiculous because she’d break her brain trying to understand how much you love her.

You end up scoffing and making one syllable sounds of distress because the words just won’t come out but she just giggles and kisses you.

“I get it.” She says. “I feel the same way about you.”

Maybe that’s all that matters, in the end.

She gets you and you get her.


End file.
